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Experience & Qualifications

General Experience

My name is Ionela Hanganu and I am an actress.
I finished Drama School in 2001 at The“George Enescu” University of Fine Arts, Music and Drama, Romania.
During the university studies (1997-2001), I have been working in partnership with The National Theatre as supporting actor in some of the plays for main stage or studio performances and in 2000-2001 The National Theatre booked our class plays “The Seagull” by Anton Chekhov and “The Life of Man” by L. Andreev for regular performances as a professional company.
Just before to finish with my exams I’ve got involved in a National Contest and won the prize for the best performance with the character Mrs. Rowland from the short play “Before Breakfast” by Eugene O’Neill.
Finishing all the exams for a diploma I’ve moved to the city of Bacau to work with an itinerant theatre group, small but very active. I can translate the name of it as Thespis‘s Chariot. We wrote and played some of our performances for children and adults, travelling around the city, villages, going to festivals and often played in open spaces, schools and kindergartens.
Going to live in Bucharest I continued my professional activity with Masca Theatre where I met a company of young actors performing mainly outdoor or in unconventional spaces. The performances were based on physical theatre, so we had some training to be able to do somersaults and stage stunts. I have got a little passion for stunting and the stunt teacher introduced me to his team and I had the opportunity to work for some stunts in a couple of films, though not the deadly ones and I managed to get a bit in the film and TV industry as well.
After a while I got in contact with an independent theatre company, Logos Theatre, and through them I discovered another stage in the art of speech, and the physical kind of activity was complemented by a very interesting speech training and the contact with a more spiritual part of the art and an avant-garde theatre experience.
I am a Rumanian living in England. Destiny comes unexpectedly when you think you know it. Mine is a love story which started in Romania and continues happily here.
I have been in England since 2007 and had several jobs: working on a farm, being a nanny, actress, cleaner, waitress, working with disabled or elderly, etc. I enjoy working with lovely people doesn’t matter the job, but Theatre is my passion.
In Sussex I had the luck to meet a very good director, Romanian too, and to work with him for two incredible performances : disabled and professionals together. One of the plays was “Pericles, Prince of Tyre” by W. Shakespeare and we took it to Switzerland and the other one, “The Nightingale”, was an adaptation of Hans Christian’s story and we took it to Brighton Fringe and Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Now we are in rehearsals with “Peer Gynt”.
The end of 2009 and the beginning of 2010 caught me in Gloucester in a Narnian story,”The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe”, which had a great success. I had the chance to work with a company of professionals, very warm and very creative people. Acting, dancing, fighting, I enjoyed being a wolf or a leopard, a demon or a maid and more than all, a kind giant. But this place has quite a bad luck with the funds and the actors are struggling to put something on stage again, a sad situation for the city.
I haven’t gone through every detail of my artistic experiences but I have tried to describe in general lines the main ones. If this letter got your attention, then please, continue with visiting my website where you can find some more details and some photos.


Kind regards,
Ionela Hanganu

Qualifications & Training

The University of Fine Arts "George Enescu", Music and Drama, Romania, Diploma in Drama

Other Information

Relevant Skills

Acting
Contemporary dance
Sword fighting (Medium level)
Basic stunting

Interests & Hobbies

Photography
Hiking
Dance